Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
Lennon
There are exactly seven serving dishes on Paul’s dining table, all filled with food I prepared, which is the only thing keeping my hands from shaking.
I count them again. Seven.
Four of them are for Paul. Those are at the center of the table.
The big white dish of mashed potatoes I pushed through the ricer twice so there isn’t a single lump anywhere in them, glossy with brown butter I babied until it smelled like hazelnuts.
There’s a pan of ground beef, cooked evenly and broken down small, plain buttered noodles, and fries I cut by hand so every single one is the same width and golden color, because a surprise in your mouth is the whole problem, and I will not be the surprise.
Everything else I made loud on purpose. Roasted tomatoes, charred broccolini with too much garlic.
A salad so bright it looks like it’s showing off.
A jug of pan sauce I’ll pour over my beef and Ridge’s and Nevan’s, and a bowl of chili crisp that Nevan has already moved three inches closer to his plate like he’s planning something.
The point is for the safe food not to look like the accommodation. It looks like the heart of the meal, while the bright stuff looks like the extra, so Paul doesn’t feel like a man being handled.
He won’t say if it worked. He’ll just eat, and that’s how I’ll know.
“Sit, Lemon.” Nevan pulls the chair out next to him with his foot. “You’ve been vertical for nine hours. I counted.”
“You did not count.”
“I counted some of it.”
I sit, and my knees do the thing where they realize how long they’ve been working only once I stop using them. I have to press my palm flat to the table to feel something solid.
Tomorrow is the blue moon.
I don’t say it, but it sits at our table like a fifth dinner guest. An unwanted tagalong.
Ridge wheels in close to the table across from me, and my gaze finds his mouth for the hundredth time today.
That mouth is why I didn’t sleep right or slept too right.
Ridge catches me looking because of course, he does, as he puts a fry in his mouth. “The dinner is amazing, Chef. But I’m still thinking about the one you made me yesterday. You know I—”
“Eat your dinner, Ridge,” Paul cuts him off, making Nevan chuckle and my cheeks heat.
God, it was so good.
Afterward, I curled into his side, meaning to stay awake, waiting for the others so we could all go to sleep together, but instead, I dropped straight down into a dream where I wasn’t lucid at all.
Wasted. That’s the word that’s been chewing on me since I woke up.
We were supposed to practice. We were supposed to dream together, wearing Tessa’s face, and work out any issues before it counts.
Instead, I probably dreamed something soft and stupid about flying muffins, while Ridge dreamed whatever Ridge dreams, and we surfaced this morning too well rested to try to go lucid in daylight.
So, we spent the whole day with Tessa.
Not the real one or the dream version. Pictures of Tessa. We printed out all the pictures I had of her and then sat, learning her like a part in a movie with how she stands with her weight on one hip and the gap between her front teeth she hates, and I love.
You have to know a face all the way down to wear it. That’s the whole plan, basically. Go in looking like her and reach her in the noise.
I felt good about the plan today, but now, sitting at a table with the men I love and the blue moon waiting, everything I have to lose starts to fill the spaces between us.
There is no guarantee we will all make it back here to do this again.
“Sometimes, we have to sacrifice ourselves for the people we love.”
Seraphine’s voice echoes in my mind, making me shudder.
“Jesus,” Paul murmurs, bringing my attention back to the table. He’s looking at a forkful of potatoes with an expression I can’t quite place.
“You don’t have to eat them if they’r—”
“They’re perfect,” he says, cutting me off. His almost watery gaze finds mine as he eats the bite, and his shoulders come down half an inch. “Thank you.”
“There’s more if you want.”
“Of course, there’s more.” Nevan chuckles from beside me. “There’s always more when you cook, which I, for my part, appreciate the heck out of.” He loads his plate with a mountain of mashed potatoes, a fistful of fries, and then drowns all of it in chili crisp like he’s recreating a crime scene.
The contrast is so dumb and so on purpose that Paul actually huffs out something close to a laugh.
“You’re an animal,” Ridge tells him, piling a load of fries just as huge onto his plate.
I laugh, and my heart swells. Not only by the fact that they’re enjoying my cooking, but because they’re eating the same food Paul is, piling it high and fighting over the noodles.
They understood the assignment, making his safe foods look like the most wanted ones on the table, and the bright, loud stuff is a sideshow, an accessory.
Nobody says safe food. Nobody says texture.
They accept that the center of the table is Paul’s by default, and I love all three of them so much in this exact second that I have to take a long drink of water to keep from bursting into tears.
Nevan and Ridge are still fighting over the noodles when my phone goes off against the table, and I nearly snort out my water when I read Jasper’s message.
Jasper
Ok but watching Mabel fire Simon WITH the cops there was the most fun I’ve had all week!!! 10/10 would witness again. She didn’t even raise her voice.
I read it twice, and the text doesn’t change, meaning I’m awake. The check I now do on reflex.
“Oh, this is priceless.”
Three heads turn in my direction.
“What is?” Paul asks.
“Mabel fired Simon today. With the police there.”
“What?” all three of them say, more or less on top of each other, and it would be funny if my stomach didn’t drop, because right.
Right. I forgot to tell them.
I put the phone face down like it’ll lessen the impact of what I’m going to say. “Okay, so, when I wanted to go wait for you guys at the car yesterday, I witnessed how Simon wouldn’t take a no as an answer from Sydney.”
My gaze drifts to Nevan as I say it. I don’t decide to. I just do, because there’s a little voice in my head that is worried Sydney’s name will do something to him, and I want to know. To see.
But it does almost nothing.
He’s concerned. He’s frowning like a normal person when they hear that someone wouldn’t take no for an answer. His jaw is set, but it’s the concern of a man hearing about something that happened to a person he knows. There’s no second floor to it. No trapdoor with Sydney still living down there.
But then his eyes drift over all of me, as if he needs to make sure I’m not leaving anything important out, like I might have been harmed somehow.
Oh, I think, and the oh has its own warmth. I’m not proud of that, but I’m not going to pretend it isn’t there either.
“Wait.” Ridge frowns the same way Nevan does. “Who are these people?”
“They work at the inn. Reception and restaurant,” Nevan provides, but his eyes are still on mine. “What do you mean? What did Simon do?”
“He pressured her into kissing him, so I pressured my knee into his balls.” I shrug, trying to make light of it.
“You did what?” Paul’s fork clatters to the plate while Nevan laughs and Ridge almost chokes on a fry.
“You’re a violent little thing, aren’t you?” Nevan teases, grinning as he grabs the back of my neck and pulls me in for a kiss. “I’m proud of you.”
“I’m not for violence, but it sounds like he deserved it, and to be honest, I never liked him,” Paul says, calmly cleaning his hands with a napkin.
“You don’t like a lot of people,” Ridge counters.
“I liked him less than that.”
“Yeah,” Nevan says, taking my hand as his eyes turn apologetic. “I shouldn’t have hired him.”
“That’s not your fault,” Ridge says, eating another fry. “Don’t you dare put him acting like an asshole on yourself.”
“No, I know. I know that.” Nevan rubs the back of his neck. “And I don’t want to excuse him. There’s no excuse. But I needed help at the inn, and he had recently lost his job. I knew him from school. He had a hard time there, too, as a kid. Doesn’t make it okay. Nothing makes it okay.”
“Why’s that?” I ask. “The hard time.”
“His dad had the flower shop in town. The one in the corner where the laundromat is now.” Nevan turns his water glass a quarter turn.
“I remember that one.” Paul nods. “He had nice plants.”
Ridge snorts, but we all ignore him as Nevan eyes Paul, then continues the story.
“When Simon was little, his dad had an accident in the shop, a bad one, and after that, there wasn’t a flower shop anymore, and Simon was put in foster care.”
“Oh no.” I feel the pity rising in me, and I hate that I can’t seem to stop empathizing with assholes.
“Right, I remember that too,” Ridge scoffs. “The other other tragedy in Vernonia.”
The first tragedy is my comatose best friend, and the second is sitting at this corner of the table in a wheelchair, holding a fry in a way that’s somehow menacing, daring any of us to be soft about it.
“There are a truly insane number of tragedies in this town,” I mumble. “We should move.”
“What exactly happened to the dad? I can’t remember.” Paul frowns at Nevan, who looks into his glass.
“Apparently, some heavy pots fell on the guy. Whole shelf of them, I heard.”
“There are an awful lot of things falling on people in this town,” I hear myself mutter, glancing up when I hear Ridge’s dark chuckle.
“And it’s always plants.” Ridge grins at me.
“Have you noticed? Trees. Pots of plants. Plant-adjacent. Whatever fell on the flower-shop guy was probably a fern.” He slowly looks around at the fiddle-leaf fig in the corner and the herbs on the sill.
“I don’t think we should move. I think we should get rid of the plants. ”
“The plants are staying,” Paul says, without looking up from his potatoes.
“I’m just saying.”
“The plants are staying, Ridge.” Delivered like a man who has loved his ferns longer than he’s loved any of us and is not interested in our trauma about it.
I laugh until my eyes sting, which is a relief, because some of the sting was already there waiting for an excuse.
“We didn’t get to rehearse yesterday,” Paul says when I’m finally done laughing.
“No.” Ridge doesn’t look at me when he says it, and I don’t look at him, and the not-looking is so loud I’m amazed the plants don’t rustle.
“So, we use tonight.” Paul folds his napkin into a square, then into a smaller square. “I, for my part, could use a tea and some sleep.”
The guys do the dishes, and I make four cups of Seraphine’s tea. Not too hot. She was clear about not being too hot.
We all get ready for bed and eventually end up in Ridge’s room, where he transfers from the chair to the mattress.
“I can see you not helping,” Ridge murmurs to Nevan.
“I’m just standing here,” Nevan protests.
“Then stand there less, baby boy.”
I go around the room with the crystals Jasper gave us, placing one on the nightstand on my side, where it can see me.
Then the others, the way Jasper taught me with points and groupings, a small circle on the dresser, one by the window.
I don’t fully know what all of them do, but I trust my little punk fairy.
“I am never,” Nevan announces from the middle of the bed, where he’s arranged himself diagonally like a fallen tree. “Going to get to sleep in a house without these things in it, am I?”
“Probably not,” I say through a chuckle.
Nevan sighs at the ceiling. “Can’t that be a new rule when we’re done here? No crystals in the house?”
“Absolutely not. Paul keeps his plants. I keep the crystals.” I glance at Paul, who nods in agreement.
What can I say?
I’m starting to be a crystal person.
“Here.” Ridge reaches over to the pebble collection on his nightstand and hands one to Nevan. “You can borrow one of mine.”
“Um…” Nevan takes the little white stone. “Thanks?”
“Drink your tea,” I tell them as I pick up mine. Over the rim of the cup, I look at them on this too-big bed in this never-dark house, and I think, please, to no one, or maybe to the moonstone around my neck.
Please let us get Tessa tomorrow.
Please let us all wake up after.
Together.